UAL Open Doctoral School: Rethinking Free Speech & Academic Freedom...

The question of how we speak, listen, and disagree within universities has never felt more unsettled. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 has reshaped institutional responsibilities and public expectations, intersecting with existing legal frameworks such as the Equality Act 2010 and the Terrorism Act 2000. Together, they produce a shifting landscape in which creative, critical, and scholarly practices are negotiated.

For researchers working at the edges—of practice, theory, identity, and community—these debates are not abstract. They inform how we gather, how we exchange ideas, and how we hold space for positions that may be fragile, uncomfortable, or in tension with one another.

This event invites us to consider free speech and academic freedom as lived relations, shaped by care as much as by conflict. Rather than seeking resolution, we will explore how listening, hesitation, uncertainty, and attention might open different ways of inhabiting difficult conversations within and beyond the university.

We begin with a workshop on nonviolent communication, offering a set of practices for approaching communication with clarity and care. The afternoon turns to philosophical, legal, and transcultural perspectives on free expression, recognising that claims to “freedom” can be both protective and exclusionary, enabling and constraining. Together, we will ask how these dynamics shape our work as researchers, artists, writers, and designers, and what forms of responsibility they call for.

By the end of the day, participants will:

• Engage with key concepts of academic freedom, free speech, and freedom of expression
• Learn about recent UK legislation and UAL’s new Code of Conduct for Freedom of Expression
• Explore philosophical and transcultural perspectives on speech, silence, and their limits
• Practise nonviolent communication as a framework for thoughtful dialogue and creative-critical exchange.

Drinks and snacks will be provided. Please bring your own lunch or explore nearby options.

This event is in-person only and will not be recorded.

Open Doctoral School events welcome the research-curious from both inside and outside the university. You are welcome to bring others—registration is required.

This event also launches Conversations at Edges, a series running January–May 2026. These sessions invite us to work with the tensions, uncertainties, and possibilities that shape knowledge and experience. Together, we will create spaces in which disagreement can be approached with curiosity, and complexity becomes a resource for reflection and change.

Programme

11:00–11:15
Welcome and introduction

11:15–12:45

Nonviolent communication: introduction and activity

Facilitator: Dr Anna Troisi

12:45–13:45

Lunch

(Bring your own; seating available in Blueprint Space or the Doctoral School)

13:45–16:00

Perspectives and contexts on academic freedom and free speech

Contributions from: Dr Silke Lange, Prof Navtej Purewal, David Cross, Prof Paul Goodwin, Dr Bob Whalley, and Dr Alison Green

Followed by:

• Group discussion activity
• Open discussion: What does this mean for being researchers, artists, writers, designers? What do we do?

16:00

Close

Who we are

David Cross is an artist and academic engaging with the social-ecological crisis. In 2005 he stopped using air travel; in 2012, following the Artist Placement Group, he designated his job at UAL as an artist placement, proposing that UAL switch to an ethical bank. In 2015, he campaigned with students for UAL to divest from fossil fuels; since 2018, David advocated connecting decarbonisation and decolonisation; in 2022, he persuaded UAL to commit to a just share of the Global Carbon Budget, in 2024, to reconsider its relationship with Lloyds Bank, which finances controversial weapons. David now invites colleagues to envision the university as a co-operative.

Prof Paul Goodwin is Chair of Contemporary Art & Urbanism at Chelsea, Camberwell & Wimbledon Colleges of Art (CCW) and Director of the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity & Nation (TrAIN) at UAL. He is a curator, researcher and educator based in London whose research focuses on Black British Art and African diaspora art since 1980 and transnationalism in contemporary art production.

Dr Alison Green is a Reader in Art, Curating and Culture at Central Saint Martins and Co-Director of Doctoral Training and Development at UAL's Doctoral School. She is a researcher, scholar, writer and academic leader in the history and theory of art, and curating as creative and social practices. She is interested in how to speak of and write on culture in the presence of political violence.

Dr Silke Lange is Reader in Hybrid and Participatory Pedagogy and Head of Educational Research at UAL. She serves as chair of the UAL Educational Ethics Sub-Committee and contributed to the university wide Conflict in Learning Spaces project. Since 2024, Silke has been the advisor and moderator for the ELIA Dialogue Series: Higher Arts Education in Times of Conflict. The series seeks to facilitate discussion by creating brave spaces for international dialogue, embracing a plurality of perspectives, guided by frameworks of mutual respect, to discuss and debate the role of higher arts education in response to conflict and crisis.

Prof Navtej Purewal is Deputy Director of the Decolonising Arts Institute at UAL and works on the politics of development and cultural and social policy. She has been following attacks on academic freedom in India through the rise of majoritarianism and accompanying agendas of ‘development,’ ‘national security’ and neoliberalism for the last decade.

Dr Anna Troisi is a reader in Creative Computing and Equitable Futures at the Creative Computing Institute. At UAL Anna serves also as Chair of the Research and KE Ethics Committee (RKEESC). Internationally recognised for her work in Nonviolent Communication in higher education she integrates relational, ethical, and creative approaches to teaching, supervision, and research culture. Her practice spans sonic arts, computational methods, and participatory design, with a focus on dialogue, care, and inclusive pedagogies. She was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship for her pioneering work embedding NVC across disciplines.

Dr Bob Whalley is Reader in Artistic Research and Performance at University of the Arts London, where she leads Doctoral Training and Development in the Doctoral School. Her work sits at the intersection of performance, dramaturgy and artistic research, with a focus on collaboration, embodiment and the relational dynamics of practice. She has an established track record as an artist-researcher and dramaturg, and her recent work includes explorations of temporal attention and ecological thinking in performance. At UAL, she supports doctoral researchers across creative disciplines, developing training that connects practice, critical enquiry and research ethics.